Inner Temple Library The Eichmann trial papers: a resonance for our time July 2015 Based on an article by Master Goodman in the Inner Temple Library Newsletter Issue 16, April 2009 In late 2007 a large number of tied bundles of documents were rediscovered in the basement stacks of the Library in the Littleton Building. A first view suggested that they were transcripts of the Eichmann trial, held in Jerusalem in 1961. In May 2008, with the kind assistance of Michael Simon, a multi-lingual family practitioner from 4 Paper Buildings I investigated the find. We established that the papers do not contain a transcript of the trial of Eichmann; rather they represent the primary evidence used in the trial. If Reinhard Heydrich was the architect of the Nazi Final Solution, Karl Adolf Eichmann was responsible for Adolf Eichmann delivering the Holocaust as a matter of state policy. He personally directed and routed transports from all over Europe to the camps, visited the Einsatzgruppen at work behind the Russian front, attended Auschwitz Birkenau, Treblinka, Chelmno and Sobibor to examine the efficiency of the killing programme, and took day to day control in Budapest of the dispatch of 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps in 1944. He was secretary to the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942 which agreed the logistical and administrative detail of the Final Solution, and was responsible for the propaganda camp at Theresienstadt. After the war, Eichmann fled to Argentina. In May 1960, he was abducted by the Israeli Security Service and brought back to Jerusalem to stand trial for genocide. His was one of the first internationally televised trials, which lasted from April until August 1961. Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging and executed in May 1962, the only man ever to be judicially executed by the Israeli state. What do the papers contain? First there is a series of bound bundles which contain transcripts of the tape-recorded interviews with Eichmann made under interrogation by Israel's criminal police department, running to a little over 3,500 pages. A schedule, in German, lists those documents to which he was referred under questioning. Next are a series of folders containing the prosecution’s opening notes or memoranda to the trial judges outlining the case in respect of each country under German occupation, then approximately 25 bundles representing around 1,700 pieces of primary evidence used at the trial. These run to over 5,000 pages of copy documents, affidavits, witness statements from victims, and from convicted Nazis and former members of the SS. There are in addition transcripts or extracts of judgments from other Nazi war crimes trials (particularly that of Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz). These are in German, Hebrew, and various east European languages. One selfcontained schedule in Hebrew summarises each item and is very useful. The documents are in the correct order and virtually all in very good condition. Curiously, no-one knows how these papers came to be in the Library. The minutes of the Library Committee between 1962 and 2007 have been perused, but there is no mention of a gift or loan of these papers. An initial guess was that the papers might have come to the Inn via Lord Russell of Liverpool, a member of Inner who, in June 1946, became Deputy Judge Advocate, British Army of the Rhine, and held that appointment until July 1947, and again from October 1948 to May 1951. He was legal adviser to the Commander-in-Chief in respect of all trials by British Military Courts of German war criminals. In May 1951 he returned to the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Forces in London and took up the appointment of Assistant Judge Advocate General, resigning on 8 August 1954. The British Government sent no official observer to the Eichmann trial, but L o r d R u ss el l a l m o s t certainly attended. The foreword of his book, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) refers to the fact that it preceded publication of the transcripts, and the publicity material for Heinemann, Russell’s publishers, mentions his presence at the trial. Reading the Eichmann papers is a chilling experience. They contain a number of personal items: his SS staff service record with photographs, party membership of 1933, the Lebenslauf (or “C.V.”) for Eichmann and his wife, and an application for a marriage licence with a family tree proving full Aryan descent for three generations on both sides. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of orders emanating from Eichmann’s office, covering deportations, “resettlement”, “actions” and “special treatment” in the minutest of detail. He issued detailed guidance on the deportation procedure, specifying collection points, routes, timetables, the hiring of railway trucks, the amount each deportee could carry, and where he or she would be relieved of that burden. Instructions were also issued regarding confiscated property, both before and after deportation: cash was to be sent to the Reich central bank; watches, fountain pens, torches, wallets and other personal belongings were to be repaired and cleaned by camp inmates and then sold cheaply to soldiers in the front line. Men’s and women’s clothing was to be collected and sent to Volksdeutsche in the Eastern areas, in addition to blankets, umbrellas, prams and other useful items. Spectacles went to the Ministry of Health, linen and tablecloths to the army and furs to RHSA. Reading these documents one is struck by two things. First, they reinforce the description, “the banality of evil” given by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She asserted that the bureaucratisation and rationalisation of the nation-state made possible a new, industrialised kind of mass murder. Eichmann was, in her view, a symptom of this “banality” rather than a prime mover in the Nazi machinery of organised killing. Second, there may be a real resonance for our time. We have seen over the last decade a centralisation of governance, and of the police, leading to their politicisation; a tension between the Executive and the Judiciary over the exercise of the rule of law; the isolation and vilification of a small minority group; and an attack of the institution of habeas corpus on the grounds of state security and the prevention of crime. Euthanasia is once again on the social and political agenda. The justification “for the public good” is used for the ever-increasing surveillance of our society, and in particular the control of young people; and regulation now dominates both the social and even the domestic sphere. Statutory powers intended to facilitate pursuit of serious crime and matters of national security are now routinely used by local councils to spy on citizens suspected of trivial by-law offences. There are over 600 regulatory powers allowing a variety of governmental organisations access to our homes. An octogenarian heckler is ejected from a Labour Party Conference reportedly under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation; demonstrators against a further runway at Heathrow are detained and harassed by police. Our ancient liberties under the common law are now measured by reference to a European convention, that of Human Rights. Once, everything was permitted unless proscribed; soon, activities will require state permission, if not licensing. Our political language has long ceased to be that of left or right. The argument is dominated by the conflict between authoritarians and libertarians. Are we gradually laying the ground for a future totalitarianism? If nothing else Eichmann has taught us that where there is a political will, bureaucrats will act, irrespective of the end. These papers demonstrate how easy it is to do so, once the mechanism and powers for bureaucratic management and intervention have been laid down. As Lord Russell concludes, writing of Eichmann, “That the head of a small department felt able to implement Hitler’s criminal plans, without so much as a protest, is a reminder, never to be forgotten, of the appalling and disastrous effects of totalitarianism on men’s minds.” This is an abridged version of an article which originally appeared in the Inner Temple Yearbook 2008-2009. Postscript The Inn’s Library Committee and Executive Committee later agreed that the Eichmann papers should be deposited on long term loan with the Wiener Library (which specialises in material on the Holocaust), where they would be more readily accessible to researchers. The present Lord Russell of Liverpool was consulted about the origin of the papers but had no knowledge of them. Eichmann image: no copyright. All other images © Inner Temple Library
© Copyright 2024 Paperzz